Building Houses for Low-income FamiliesThe latest statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics indicate that about 88 per cent of housing sold last year in China went to individuals instead of institutions, the dominant buyer in the past.China's total housing sales volume reached 295.4 billion yuan (US$35.6 billion) in 2000, 84.9 per cent of which was contributed by individual buyers ranging from blue-collar workers to millionaires. Yu Zhengsheng, minister of construction, said that individuals have been the dominant consumer in China's real estate market for a few years. Statistics indicated that 98.5 per cent of apartments sold in Beijing's neighbouring city of Tianjin were purchased by individuals last year, while the rates in the municipalities of Chongqing, Shanghai and Beijing were 96 per cent, 95 per cent and 87 per cent respectively. Before 1999, government employees and workers in State agencies and State enterprises usually rented apartments from their working places for very little as part of the State's welfare system. The nationwide housing reforms that were initiated in 1999 saw individuals urged to buy apartments with bank loans or government subsidies. Chinese governments at all levels have been putting their support behind building low-cost apartments to enable more low and middle-income families to own homes. Banks immediately followed the trend and now offer low-interest housing loans to individual home buyers under the guidance of the central government. The mushrooming real estate corporations quickly updated their marketing strategies in response to the changing real estate market. Li Yong, section manager in charge of market planning with the Beijing-based Tianhong Real Estate Group, said the drastic changes in China's housing system require real estate firms to develop more market-oriented apartments to win more customers. Situated in the northern part of Beijing, apartments in the Huilongguan economical residential community, a masterpiece of the Tianhong Group and the largest of its kind in China, have become hot sellers in the Chinese capital, where commercial apartments have been more expensive than anywhere else in China in recent years. "The low price of 2,600 yuan (US$313) per square metre, the provision of over 100 choices of apartment and the nearly 47 per cent rate of green coverage are the outstanding attractions of our apartments," said Li, who has been in the business for more than a decade. Although the detailed blueprint for the second phase of the Huilongguan residential community has not yet been revealed to the public, over 15,000 Beijing families have put their names down for an apartment, a salesman at the Huilongguan sales office said. Such buying frenzies are not uncommon in other places around China now that residents find it easier to obtain housing loans from key commercial banks. More than 330,000 families in Shanghai, the first city in China to offer bank loans for individuals to buy housing, have moved into new apartments over the past decade. Since 1991, the city has issued some 25 billion yuan (US$3 billion) in loans to individual buyers. The municipality plans to grant another 9 billion yuan (US$1.08 billion) in loans to boost the individual real estate market this year. Guangzhou, another metropolis in South China, built over 1 million square metres of low-price housing to accommodate some 15,200 low and middle-income families in the past four years. Observers here believe that with the government's financial support and stringent regulation of the housing market, more low- and middle-income Chinese households will be able to purchase their own apartments. |
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